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IMHO your marketing (incl. the title of this HN post) should more heavily emphasize that this has a native mobile app available in App Stores, that talks to this self-hosted server. There are many other private photo-hosting systems, but most of them are web-only — very few have a good, comfortable native mobile UI that you'd actually want to use!

See also: the directory https://github.com/relink2013/Awesome-Self-hosting-for-the-w..., that collects "self-hostable services with native mobile app clients." This project should be on there! (Right now, the only entries in the Photos category are two [closed-source!] Synology offerings, and one other app that's not E2E-encrypted. You're better than these — go claim your crown.)

This is exciting, I've been looking/hoping for something like this for a while but all the options I've come across so far were lackluster. I have just tried setting it up with the iOS and Windows apps, I do not see an option to point it to a self-hosted server at all, am I missing something?

The server was open sourced just yesterday, wasn't planning to show HN this soon, but here we are :)

We've a discussion to add an option in-app to configure the endpoint @ https://github.com/ente-io/ente/discussions/504

I understand :) Must be exciting to get such a strong and (largely) positive community response! Subscribed to the FR updates and am eager to try this out!

I am not sure they want to heavily stress that in their marketing materials: they still want people to subscribe to their service, right?

If all the applications are free software, it's obvious you can do that even if it means recompiling it (minus for iOS, sorry) — I believe it's ok if they have the option described somewhere deep in a FAQ or on-prem setup instructions.

The last commit to that directory was 5 years ago. I don't think it's useful.

Alright, maybe they shouldn't bother trying to get listed on there.

But the very fact that the best directory for this kind of thing that I could find, is so spartan and unmaintained, tells you a lot about how rare this combination of features is.

This[1] seems like a well maintained repo.

And thank you for the pointers, we'll try to get ourselves added here :)

[1]: https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted

It's a fine directory, but it's not a directory for the specific constraint we're talking about here — self-hosted services with mobile apps. It's just a list of self-hosted services — most of which don't have mobile-apps. (And the directory makes no note of whether or not any given offering has a mobile app.)

Quick note: your website front page currently says

> Our open source code has been audited by reputed cryptographers.

I think you probably mean "reputable", as "reputed" inspires a lot less confidence.

Fixed, thank you for pointing this out!

reputed works.

Dictionary Definitions from Oxford Languages · reputed /rɪˈpjuːtɪd/ adjective past participle: reputed

2. widely known and well thought of. "a highly reputed company"

Similar:well thought of, well respected, respected, highly regarded

This was the intent.

But like OP pointed out, "reputed" could also mean

> generally believed to exist or be something specified, but not definitely the case. "a reputed budget of $165 million"

For now I've replaced it with the less ambiguous word ("reputable") to remove any confusion and will pick a better way to phrase this the next time we iterate on the landing page.

Hey! I wanted to ask you something.

So, I am traditionally somebody who self hosts a lot of stuff. I am not allergic to paying a fee to have something hosted by someone else - but one of my conditions to doing this is that there is an easy way to migrate away from the cloud offering should I choose to in the future.

To give an example, I use Tailscale HEAVILY right across all my self hosted stuff. It is absolutely central to everything I do - and I'd find it very hard to live without it. I am totally comfortable with this because Headscale exists, which is an open source implementation of Tailscale. If for some reason Tailscale starts making decisions I don't like, or perhaps the pricing changes in a way I am not a fan of, I have the option of trading some convenience.

I am really happy to see your server is open source. That is amazing news, and makes me feel a lot more interested in your product. I wanted to ask a few questions though:

* Let's say I've signed up with your service, and am hosting a bunch of stuff with you. I decide after 6 months I don't like some changes to the pricing model or something. How does one get their data out of the `cloud` ente.io - and into a self hosted instance of the server? Is there any data loss during this process?

* Your clients are not open source. I totally understand this. Do they however support talking to a different backend (like for example a self hosted Ente instance)?

* And finally - how would you say your tool compares to the two main open source Google Photos replacements, Immich and Photoprism?

Hey!

> data out

You can use our Desktop app[1] or CLI[2] to export your data, incrementally. There's a toggle within our Desktop app that will perform this operation continuously into a directory of your choosing. You can of course script the CLI however you'd like.

There is no data-loss, you export what you import.

> clients are not open source

Our clients have always been open source. You can find them within our monorepo here[3].

Currently you have to pass a flag at build time to configure the endpoint, but there's a discussion[4] to add an option in-app instead.

> Immich and Photoprism

Ente comes with e2ee[5] and replication strategies[6]. The former means that we've to run ML on the Edge, while Immich and Photoprism can run ML on their servers. If your primary use case is self-hosting, Immich is the more "intelligent" option. If you value convenience, Ente is the one.

[1]: https://ente.io/downloads/desktop

[2]: https://github.com/ente-io/cli

[3]: https://github.com/ente-io/ente

[4]: https://github.com/ente-io/ente/discussions/504

[5]: https://ente.io/architecture

[6]: https://ente.io/reliability

> How does one get their data out of the cloud ente.io - and into a self hosted instance of the server? Is there any data loss during this process?

Just to jump in cause I was curious myself. I think your question is answered here:

"Command Line Utility for exporting data from Ente"

https://github.com/ente-io/ente/tree/main/cli

This is awesome to see, congratulations from the Immich team on building an amazing app!

Thank you! We're fans of Immich!

Question:

Do you backup changed photos in iOS?

How do you backup a slow motion video on iOS? Synology exports, meaning your 240fps video becomes a 30fps video.

Immich retains the 240fps.

Yes, we do backup updated photos.

Just tested out a slow-motion video on iOS, we unfortunately don't retain the transformation.

On the brighter side of things, it's just a transformation. We are retaining the original file as is. So will look into how Immich is handling this format. Thanks for bringing this up!

Oh no. If you keep the 240fps video, that is what a backup is. Which is what I want.

How it's played is not a concern of the backup tool. It is a concern of the player.

Synology exports. So I record something at 240fps, and then the file uploaded is 30fps. That's not a backup.

It's like when you backup a photoshop PSD. You want a backup of the PSD, not a flattened PNG.

To double check, I just recorded a slow-motion video, downloaded it from Ente to my desktop, ran `ffmpeg -i FILE.MOV`, and the stream info says:

```

Stream #0:0[0x1](und): Video: hevc (Main) (hvc1 / 0x31637668), yuv420p(tv, bt709), 1920x1080, 78644 kb/s, 239.70 fps, 240 tbr, 2400 tbn (default)

```

Yea. That's correct.

I think it would be cool for the player to recognize a 240fps video and allow it to play slow mo. But again, that's a client responsibly.

Speaking of iOS and the associated hardware, an immediate dealbreaker for me in terms of daily usage is the clipping to sRGB.

This stuck ut immediately to me trying the app out, which made me read about it on your blog[0]. Oddly, when accessing Ente on the web (Safari on a Mac), the thumbnails look right but the full view is sRGB.

I understand Flutter has made some progress in this department [1], but I guess there's more going on here?

The fundamentals of the project look absolutely great! Hope to become a user very soon.

[0]https://ente.io/blog/tech/display-p3/ [1]https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/55092#issuecomment...

I realize it's very hard, but can we maybe reconsider opening the encryption-at-rest feature request? https://github.com/immich-app/immich/issues/450

Maybe we can give temporary access to processing steps in the pipeline, then have Immich forget the keys after it does the processing?

Tangential, is this intended to be pronounced like "എന്റെ", judging by your HN handle? Stoked to run into a fellow mallu founder of a consumer product. A huge fan of how the product/business is being run.

Thank you!

I've scribbled a bit about the story behind the name and the mascot here: https://ente.io/blog/ducky/

Interesting story! How did you check for trademarks, is there a search engine?

Yes, there is https://tmsearch.uspto.gov/search/search-information

എന്റെ.അയ്യോ to be exact. :D (എന്റെ means mine, and അയ്യോ is a word used to express surprise). I remember the Show HN and I'm glad to see them grow.

deva.me being already taken, I guess.

This looks great - thank you so much for opening up the server too!

About auth, I'm not sure the claim in the readme is entirely correct:

> Two years ago, while building Ente Photos, we realized that there was no open source end-to-end encrypted authenticator app.

Surely bitwarden existed and had 2fa support two years ago? Granted it's not only an authenticator app...

Ed:[I guess 2fa is/was a pay-only feature, so only source-available? ]

Looks like auth is a great dedicated 2fa app by the way, surprised I've not come across it before.

The primary issue with Bitwarden is that your passwords and 2FA tokens are stored at the same place, essentially nullifying the second factor.

Also, the feature to store 2FA tokens is only available on Bitwarden's paid plan, while with Ente it's free.

> essentially nullifying the second factor

Not totally. It still protects from the password being disclosed via other means (e.g. server db leak).

Well, no - if we assume server password db leak includes leaking totp shared secret...

But that is also why I'm not overly concerned by the bitwarden model: in client compromise (ie phone), attacker gets both password and totp secret. But so too in many examples of server compromise.

Seperate totp app doesn't really mitigate any risk factors - but a seperate hw token/device do.

You could have 2fa only on phone, password manager only on desktop - but then logging in anywhere on your phone is inconvenient.

Then again: "Security is not a convenience".

That name seemed familiar, but had to really dig into my memories; alas, I still love your cover of Monte Re on the Baglamas [1]!. Wishing you all the best with ente!

[1]. https://twitter.com/VishnuKVMD/status/1253324405813284868?t=...

Did not expect to see this! This was recording during Ente's early days, and that was a very special time. Thank you for jogging my memories, and thank you for the wishes. You're very kind :)

Uses libsodium, so it can't be bad :)

Cool app, even better now that the server code is open source !

Thank you Frank! We really wouldn't be here without you!

Congratulations!!

Always good to see some one from this side making to the front page of HN!!

Thank you! I've wanted this for so long. Now that I have it, I'd rather spend money on keeping your company around!

I had to turn off uBlock in Firefox 123.0 on Linux Mint to let your web page display the pricing table.

Do you provide an easy migration from google photos with full quality? The instructions in the FAQ are a bit vague. Last time I heard about this, Google takeout won’t let you download the full quality images.

Google Takeout downloads the images in full quality.

But it splits your metadata (like capture time, geo coordinates) and places them in a separate sidecar file.

This isn't an issue if you're migrating to Ente because during import the desktop app[1] will merge the metadata with their respective files.

If it's for you to keep a local copy, you will unfortunately need to write some scripts. There's in fact a paid product[2] that does just this.

[1]: https://ente.io/download/desktop

[2]: https://metadatafixer.com/

That’s good to hear. Do you forsee the 2tb plan getting cheaper in the future?

Not unless our existing providers provide a volume discount, or we start managing some of the infrastructure (1/3 replicas) ourselves.

The latter is very likely in the long run.

I hope you will grow and start running your infrastructure. It seems that you have a strong technical team. Just curious, did you take any funding so far?

Friends and founders ("angels"), no VC.

Is it possible to use this import tool for my own local files without an Ente subscription? Because I have that metadata issue with Google Photos, but unfortunately I don't have the programming skills to write a script.

Not right now, sorry!

There's this tool that can fix capture times: https://github.com/mattwilson1024/google-photos-exif

There are perhaps more that I'm unaware of.

I'll check out this, thanks!

Hi, I'm really intrigued by Ente and would happily pay for a subscription. I love to pay for things I can self-host, but don't have to self-host unless it comes to it. Especially when there's E2EE.

However, your reply gives me pause. The website says the apps are open-source, the other comment says the server is now open-source. Does that mean there's some pluggable black-box magic that the subscription enables?

To ask another way, if I self-host the server, can't I build the desktop app, import from Google Photos and then somehow export from the self-hosted server? Maybe not as ideal as a purpose-built script? Or is this not even possible?

Hey, the server was open sourced just yesterday. We are yet to update our landing page copies, and we definitely weren't ready to be in HN today (but are glad to be here!) :)

So there is no black-box magic that the subscription enables. Our live, breathing production setup is available in a monorepo here[1].

> is this not even possible

This is very much possible.

I've added an updated comment here[2], thanks!

[1]: https://github.com/ente-io/ente

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39576920

This is extremely exciting. Shout to y'all!

Update: This comment[1] made me realize that you could run Ente locally, use our desktop app to backup your data, and then export it back out to get a clean copy.

Not very straight forward, but it should work :)

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39576825

no, takeout gives you the full quality. All other ways of accessing your photos from the api (there is some github projects) don't give you the full quality images though.

But with takeout the problem is that all dates and metadata gets messed up. I had to learn this the hard way. There is some tools that somehow correct the dates. But it's not perfect and I wouldn't really want my photos to be locked up like that. What if google decides to discontinue Google Takeout? Or just give you lower quality pictures after some point? You really are not safe.

Since that experience I moved to onedrive temporarily because it's a bit safer solution for now until all of these new services get stable (immich, ente, etc). Onedrive let's you access you photos like normal Onedrive files so that's really good. I know microsoft will have my data now and sync is also not perfect. So it's definitely not perfect. But I had to move to something else before the better solutions emerge.

Isn't Takeout their GDPR compliance tool? I don't see them ever removing it. Only exporting lower quality pictures at some point down the road is a valid concern, though.

Takeout is malicious compliance.

Google Photos already has a public API. But you cannot consume it if you are building a competing service[1]. Also, the APIs will not serve you files in their original quality.

If they wanted to honor the intent behind GDPR's portability mandate, it would have been trivial for them to enable seamless migrations.

Now what's ironic is how Google is a "partner" in the Data Transfer Initiative[2].

[1]: https://developers.google.com/photos/library/guides/acceptab...

[2]: https://dtinit.org

Takeout fails if you have too many files. I had to takeout few albums at a time which is a PITA.

OneDrive ceased to be a good backup alternative when they stripped GPS from all my photos 1-2 years ago. Unlike Google, there's no way to recover original files. They simply destroyed them.

> OneDrive ceased to be a good backup alternative when they stripped GPS from all my photos 1-2 years ago.

This is scary. Isn't OneDrive supposed to keep files bit-identical? Or were you using their iOS/Android apps to back up photos, and some bug caused the photos to be backed up without their metadata?

Yes, it is. Although seems only limited to Camera Roll folder. Perhaps this is why Samsung Camera built-in OneDrive integration uses different folder.

Their mobile app is now stripping GPS on upload while files uploaded from desktop are unaffected.

However the files I already had uploaded going back to 2017 were stripped. No idea if this was done server side or by the mobile client but the end effect is the same.

Unlike Google, Microsoft doesn't bother documenting this policy.

I haven't seen this behavior. All of my photos synced from Android to OneDrive have GPS data, as expected. I just checked a few from 2017 (Windows Phone) and 2018 (Android) and still there too. Did you see the same behavior on all your devices?

Looks like it's preserving them now (for newly backed up). I guess I was unlucky.

I have the exact same metadata issue after exporting from Google Photos. Would you mind to share which tools you used to fix it?

Hey, a fellow mallu, just wanted to send my appreciation on the product. It literally looks great, my kudos to your illustrator and FE developers. Best wishes!

Thank you for your kind words, will forward them :)

Why do you have to say this? Why say mallu instead of saying a fellow Indian?

Cause both of them are from the state of Kerala?

I don't think it's malicious. It's just mallucious :)

lmao

Do you have an import from smugmug? I have been a smugmug user for about 19 years and finally thinking of moving on...

Not yet, but you should be able to drag-and-drop the data on your disk into Ente's desktop app[1].

Please note that if you're primarily using SmugMug to store RAW files, their support (in terms of previewing capabilities) is limited right now. It's on our roadmap, and we will prioritize it, but just wanted to give you a heads up.

[1]: https://ente.io/download/desktop

Co-Founder, CEO & Chief Geek from SmugMug here. Love to know why you're thinking of moving on. :)

I'm on flickr and the semi-regular emails over the past few years telling me that I have private photos which will get deleted soon, would be my reason.

That's why you'd leave SmugMug?

"CEO & Chief Geek at Flickr"

Flickr does it, why wouldn't SmugMug?

Because SmugMug doesn't have free accounts. If you paid for Flickr, you wouldn't get those emails, either. You'd enjoy unlimited storage.

I understand that you're trying to monetize your business and I think that is important, especially since you're here commenting on an open source alternative.

But, sending multiple emails to customers with a threat to delete their private photos unless they pay, is a kafkaesque way to do business. Sorry, I'm not going to pay for something when I'm treated with actual hostility...

  April 19th 2022: [IMPORTANT] Free account limit enforcement changes.


  May 12th 2022: FINAL NOTICE: You are in violation of our free account limits.


  Oct 6th 2022: Reminder: Your account is in violation of our free account limits.

It seems that after Oct 2022, someone realized this wasn't a good idea and the emails stopped. I just logged in and checked and still have everything there. What is the point of paying, just to silence the empty threats?

Thanks for the perspective.

I think "actual hostility" would have been simply shutting Flickr off, something Yahoo was ready to do. (Post acquisition, they later publicly admitted they regretted not doing just that[1]). I'm surprised you view getting notices that you have the opportunity to download your content (or pay for it, your choice) to be hostile. Is it less hostile to simply delete the data with no warning, like hundreds of other services have done?

We've tried hard to thread the needle between fixing Flickr's business model (it was losing tens of millions of dollars a year when we bought them, primarily because giving away 1TB/account for free is not sustainable) and giving people plenty of time to download their photos prior to deletion.

Tough problem, tough situation, but I'm largely proud of how we've handled it - there's been plenty of runway and notice for people to get their photos back if they prefer not to pay (either scenario - paying or downloading - is fine in our minds, but losing photos is not). We're not holding them hostage or anything, we want everyone to have them, one way or the other.

Email open & click rates being what they are (low), we carefully tracked them, plus download and/or subscription rates, to determine how frequently to contact people so we could have a high confidence that most people knew they had a choice and had the chance to make it.

Your photos over the free limits will be deleted, eventually. I don't know when, for your specific account, but it's certainly not just to "silence empty threats". It's not a threat, it's a statement, and it was intended as a courtesy.

I'm glad you have a choice AND you _know_ you have a choice.

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/verizon-to-lay-off-7-of-media-g...

I've been a flickr user since 2005. I haven't uploaded a single image since 2014. Why? Because the quality of the service went downhill and I knew that it would eventually go away.

I think we have different perspectives on things. Flickr wasn't a way to archive content, it was a way to share it before social media showed up. The need for Flickr died over the years.

I don't really care if Flickr deletes the photos or not, they were all backed up when I originally uploaded them because I've been conditioned to services just deleting content on a whim. Those of us in crypto say, not your keys, not your coins. Similar mentality. I'm accustomed to hostility.

Sending a FINAL NOTICE and then a more friendly reminder, and then not doing anything, is hostile behavior intended to extort people to pay money for a service that really hasn't seen any improvement in a very long time.

My $0.02... listen to them and shut it down and stop burning money on it. But you won't do that cause 'the choice' must be profitable enough to keep it going.

Thanks, again, for the discussion. I really appreciate it.

I'd argue that we have the same perspective on things - Flickr is a way to share, not archive. (Archival may be a wonderful side benefit, but community and connection are what makes Flickr magical, archive is a bonus) Yahoo had a different perspective. We're attempting to reverse it.

And we're succeeding. Across every metric you can imagine, Flickr is the healthiest it's ever been. More active users, more engagement, more connections, more revenue, more of everything - except people treating it like a "photo dump".

Most importantly, our members are ecstatic about it, it's now profitable and cash flow positive, so not in imminent danger (and we're trying to build it, sustainably, for 100+ years[1]). IMHO, it's not nearly enough, yet, but the trajectory is awesome. It's working. And it's working without invading people's privacy, unlike nearly every other social media platform.

We haven't "not done anything". Your account, for reasons I don't know, though someone here at Flickr likely does, hasn't seen anything. There's a big difference. Other accounts have. Every account will, eventually, including yours. Sorry you got an extra runway. ;) We're trying to be VERY careful about deleting photos.

I'm glad you had (and have?) backups. We know definitely, though, that MOST of our members did not. You were an outlier, but our outreach to people without backups was very appreciated. They had a very clear choice, we didn't hold their photos hostage, and that mattered to them.

It was definitely not intended to extort anyone - the options were very clear: download your photos and/or pay for the storage. (I think "and" is the right choice, but I'm biased... I also don't keep my photo archive _only_ on SmugMug and/or Flickr). The vast majority downloaded, rather than paid, and we view that as a win.

We gave people years to learn, choose, and act. I'd say that's pretty generous, and more generous than nearly any other troubled Internet service I've ever heard of. Are you aware of one that's been more generous? If you DIDN'T have backups, would you still have found our emails hostile?

I would appreciate answers to my prior questions, which you didn't address. Were we more hostile than simply turning everything off? It was a binary option. We chose to give people years of choice instead of deleting their photography.

[1] https://www.flickr.org

Logging in, I have to type the 2FA code that is emailed to me because someone thought it would be a good idea to use type="number" instead of type="text". Thanks to browsers being the way they are, this means you can't copy/paste the number from an email, into the field. That says to me that people aren't actually giving you the feedback that you might need, or that you don't care enough to fix small UX issues.

When I see the home screen, I am presented with 3 friends with pro accounts, who have been using your service for years. Some as long as I have. F1: last upload 2011, F2: last upload Oct 2023, F3: 2021. What this says to me is that people are paying for storage and are not actively using the site. The non-paying friends are 1-5 years ago. Those aren't customers, those are people who fell into the trap of paying for something because it was a lower bar than migrating somewhere else.

Of course what I see is different than what you see, that's why I think our perspectives are so different.

Ok, so you're an outlier. Which is ok - we're probably not building the right service for you or your 3 friends (who can easily download and stop paying - we're not holding them hostage). We're definitely not trying to build for everyone - we have a target in mind, which is consistent with Flickr's original target 20 years ago, and you're probably not it. We're 100M+ members, not billions, and proud of it because we're focused.

I'm sad that you keep dodging what I view as the more important questions after you accused us of "actual hostility", though. I'd really love to understand how we missed the mark for you, and how we've been hostile, in case that applies to non-outliers and it's something we can improve on.

Was offering years of downloads on a _free_ service hostile? In what way? Was delaying deletion to give more people more time to download hostile? Why? Do you really believe hundreds of millions of consumers all had backups? What other similar Internet services are better examples of handling a situation like this?

Or are you just trolling and I've been feeding a troll (if so, congrats, I feel like my troll detection is relatively high)?

I'm not trolling. I'm just having a conversation trying to find a middle ground, but I don't think we are there at all. Especially since I'm in the bucket of outlier.

> I'd really love to understand how we missed the mark for you, and how we've been hostile, in case that applies to non-outliers and it's something we can improve on.

I thought I answered that above:

"Sending a FINAL NOTICE and then a more friendly reminder, and then not doing anything, is hostile behavior intended to extort people to pay money for a service that really hasn't seen any improvement in a very long time."

---

This conversation got me thinking about the history of things given that I've been a member of that site for 19 years. So, I went searching. This is a pretty good article I ran across from 2019:

https://ferdychristant.com/the-rise-fall-and-resurrection-of...

I find that little has changed since that article was written.

The whole reason I'm having the conversation is that your statement is full of opinions, assumptions, and falsehoods. "not doing anything", "intended to extort people", and "hasn't seen any improvement in a very long time" are all incorrect. I can't find the truth, and I'm a truth seeker.

Let's start with the facts:

1. You have a free account and pay $0 for the service.

2. You received a few emails informing you of our choices when we changed the free account policies and limits.

3. Your choices included downloading your content, paying for the service, and/or closing your account.

4. You (and everyone) then got more time to make your choice than we'd originally said, for free.

5. Your account, for some reason, hasn't seen some of these changes, so you got even more time to make some of those choices, again for free.

None of that sounds hostile to me. I'm not sure who would consider that behavior hostile (more choices, more time, at $0 cost). Despite the depth of the conversation, I'm still struggling to understand (but, surprisingly, still open to the idea of) how we can be accused of "actual hostility".

Now, let's take your false statements:

- "not doing anything": I can assure you we've done many things, to many accounts. Using an online search engine will reveal plenty of examples. Why has your account not seen some of them? I don't know, but speculating that we haven't done "anything" is simply not true. Even your account has seen many changes, perhaps just not the one you highlight (removing your excess private photos). Try uploading more than 1000 public photos, as just one example of doing something.

- "intended to extort people": Simply not true. The choices were clear and the timeline was, and in your case, remains extremely generous. I happen to know the intent (not deleting any photos for as long as we possibly can) and you do not. Further, every action we've taken supports this intent. We didn't, and don't, hold any photos hostage for payment or anything else. There was no extortion, and there was certainly no intent to extort.

- "hasn't seen any improvement for a very long time": While it's possible you haven't seen any of YOUR preferred improvements, the list of improvements since we took over is long and consistent. We're averaging ~10 material improvements in the form of new features, upgraded features, and significant bug fixes, each month, for the last ~5 years. (Thousands of minor bug fixes, too) They're all well-documented on our blog[1] and in our help forum[2]. Our members agree, based on all of the feedback and data we see.

I typically love conversations like these, with "delightfully discontent" customers, because that's where the real value for learning and growth usually lies, not the thrilled customers I tend to meet day in & day out. I want to learn something here, so I and we can improve. It hasn't happened yet.

We clearly fucked up - you're upset, and you're bothering to engage. I just can't figure it out. Probably my fault. But I'll keep trying. :)

[1] - https://blog.flickr.net/

[2] - https://www.flickr.com/help/forum/

This is a masterclass on customer support, thank you.

Thank you. Your project looks really neat! Let me know if we can ever collaborate. More great services for photographers in the world is always a great thing, especially if they avoid lock-in.

That's interesting.

I see this as a masterclass on how to fail to convert a 19 year member of a website, back to a paying customer.

Yes, I used to pay for Flickr Pro. I stopped when I found that it wasn't providing me value other than "we will delete your private photos" if you don't pay up.

By the way, I did at one point look in the UX to see if there was a way to be able to view just my private photos so that I could delete them myself, but it wasn't obvious in my searching. It felt like it was intentionally difficult to even see if I wanted to keep an account.

Never once did he ask the simple question: "What can we do to convert you into a paying customer again?". Everything has been some sort of weird truth seeking mission to prove me wrong.

What can Flickr do to convert you into a paying customer again?

You can't seriously expect them (or anyone) to always grandfather in old free accounts after starting to charge money, can you? Bandwidth and storage is not unlimited.

The fact that he even engaged with you at all, and to the degree he did, was incredibly kind and he showed much restraint, kudos to him for that.

But you continued to double-down on your opinions and think you're more important and worthy of his time than everyone else. Why is that?

> You can't seriously expect them (or anyone) to always grandfather in old free accounts after starting to charge money, can you? Bandwidth and storage is not unlimited.

Never once asked for that. Although, let me remind you that he does in fact make money off driving traffic to my public images (and everyone else's as well). If he wants to give away that service for free, it is his business choice to do that.

> The fact that he even engaged with you at all, and to the degree he did, was incredibly kind and he showed much restraint, kudos to him for that.

Agreed. Kudos to him!

> But you continued to double-down on your opinions and think you're more important and worthy of his time than everyone else. Why is that?

I guess it is my fault for sticking to my opinions. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I appreciate you correcting some of my falsehoods. However, I'm basing this on my impressions based on my experiences, and therefore valid in their own way.

I don't appreciate you basing your response on the idea that I'm a $0 service customer, so that I shouldn't expect anything. Nothing is ever free. My public photos drive clicks to the site and therefore paying customers. I don't get paid for that service, but you do.

We are going to have to agree to disagree on the emails. You say "simply not true", but ignore the simple fact that unless I pay for something that was previously otherwise zero cost, my photos will be deleted. Your counter argument to that is that at least the site is still up and running or that I can download the photos I already have archived. Again, that's your choice to try to bring the site to profitability, for your own financial benefit.

I'm glad you have so many happy customers. Seriously! I'm also not upset or angry and I don't appreciate being boxed in like some freeloading curmudgeon. You asked why one would move on from one of your services and I responded in kind with what I felt was valid feedback. Nothing more, nothing less.

Hilariously the emails have started up again after this conversation.

"Reminder: Your account is in violation of our free account limits."

So, here is my question... is it easy to locate AND change the privacy settings?

The instructions suggest that I can't search for my private images AND simply remove or change the privacy of them.

https://www.flickrhelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/4404078163732-C...

sorry for the eye sore, if someone can split the bullet points into multiple lines, please do, I'm unable to edit my comment

Unrelated but there’s a retired Warcraft 3 pro called Ente:

https://liquipedia.net/warcraft/EnTe

I suspect that every pronounceable combination of four Latin letters, and a number of unpronounceable ones, has been used as a moniker in the past, often multiple times.

Given that each person on earth could give themselves and 6 other things globally unique names using only 8 letters from the English alphabet, without replacement to make the names more unique[1], it's kinda sad that we have all these naming collisions.

[1]: https://www.calculator.net/permutation-and-combination-calcu...

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